“... number’ – it’s the sum of its divisors, 3, 2 and 1 – and it’s favoured for that reason by Azarya Sheiner, a six-year-old mathematical genius who is the central attractor, but not the protagonist, of Rebecca Goldstein’s new novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. Twenty-eight is the next perfect number (divisors 14, 7, 4, 2, 1), and 28 ...”

“... normally found in the more ponderous biographies of contemporary politicians. The standard life, by Conyers Read, is in two volumes (published in 1955 and 1960), each larger than Stephen Alford’s new book. Alford, the author of The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis (1998), has chosen to focus his study on the ...”

“... McGurran couldn’t resist the opportunity: ‘How’s the stoppage going, Ian?’ Paisley – by all accounts far more jovial than his pulpit demeanour suggests – replied: ‘Well, you ought to know how hard it is to lead the working class, Malachy.’ The Official IRA emerged after the IRA split in 1969, soon after the Troubles began; the other, more ...”

“... that surrounded his reputation both in his own day and afterwards, as reflected in the 1962 David Lean biopic, presenting him as the romantic hero – tall, blue-eyed, in flowing robes – he always wanted to be. His failures are familiar to anyone who has taken any serious interest in him, and were only too painfully ...”

“... he published Venus and Adonis (1593) his early plays had revealed an imagination profoundly shaped by Ovid’s tales of the interaction between gods and mortals, and, despite the growing prevalence among his audiences of a neoclassical taste for satirical urban realism, throughout his career he scripted scenes in which Hymen personally ratifies the ending of a ...”

“... 1980 at the age of 23. Joy Division belonged to the scene that emerged into the space left behind by punk. They are now part of the global adolescent ether as well as a staple of middle age. Last Christmas you could buy Joy Division oven gloves. Ian Curtis wrote mostly in small ruled notebooks, almost always in capital letters. His drafts are reproduced here ...”

“... in the aftermath of its defeat in the referendum, the SNP is playing a different game. It cannot be seen to overturn the popular will, and it is far from clear that a second referendum would yield a victory for independence. Labour voters were troubled by their party’s participation alongside the Conservatives in the ...”

“... a large loan exhibition of the Welsh ‘father of English landscape’, Richard Wilson, curated by Martin Postle and Robin Simon. It is a magnificent show, the first on this scale for more than thirty years. It will be at Cardiff until 26 October, and it is accompanied by a sumptuous ...”

“... for others. Tibi meant to call attention to the hypocrisy of Israel’s claims to be a democratic state, but as he effectively admitted, Jewish democracy did work for Jews – even Jews radically opposed to the occupation and indeed to Zionism itself. For as long as it did, liberals in Tel Aviv could tell themselves that things weren’t so ...”

“... because, with oil prices low, an independent Scotland divorced from the English economy would be unable to sustain much in the way of a welfare state. Nevertheless, Britishness is shrivelling. Enoch-land repels. A hard Brexit will make the choices facing Scots more painful still. Do we cut ourselves off from European markets, or from our largest market ...”

“... the 20th century’. The pressure of this last question – or indeed of all three – is not to be collapsed into shorthand of the kind: ‘Wasn’t English landscape bound to be an exercise in nostalgia?’ or even: ‘How could a non-duplicitous celebration of the countryside possibly survive in a culture whose ...”

“... burst onto the scene with Fancy Free, a ballet about three sailors on shore leave; the score was by Leonard Bernstein and the two soon stormed Broadway with On the Town. The same year Martha Graham premiered a rich, visually spare piece called Appalachian Spring in collaboration with Aaron Copland and Isamu Noguchi. In 1945, John Cage and Merce Cunningham ...”

“... Mathias Enard’s new book is a fictional account, no more than novella length, of a visit by Michelangelo to Constantinople in 1506. Sultan Bayezid II had already commissioned a design for a bridge over the Golden Horn from Leonardo da Vinci, and rejected it. Now Michelangelo, far from immune to rivalrous feelings, was being offered the chance to ...”

“... thought’ which would lead, in the 20th century, to a new kind of nationalism, fuelled not by ‘love’ and nostalgic ‘lyrics’ but by ‘hatred’ and steely ‘technics’. Breaking with the habit of a lifetime, Cassirer referred explicitly to his own experience: he had been one of those cultivated Germans ...”

“... All day​ it has rained,’ goes a poem written by Alun Lewis in 1941, while he was stationed with the Royal Engineers in Hampshire, ready for war but not yet called to action. It’s a poem about being bored and being grateful for the boredom since worse is to come. ‘We talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome ...”